Site Analysis Courses
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All Site Analysis Courses
Reinventing Malls: Planning Alchemy—Turning Gray Fields Into Gold
Explore the need and opportunity to reinvent aging mall sites into vibrant, inclusive, and economically valuable centers for 21st-century communities.
Walkable City 1: Why Walkability?
Jeff Speck explains his five principal reasons for building more walkable places — Economics, the Environment, Public Health, Equity, and Social Cohesiveness — arming practitioners with a full range of arguments in favor of pro-walkability planning.
Resilience Planning for Heat and Drought Events
Learn how cities can prepare their infrastructure and social services for heat waves and droughts in a warming world.
Designing the Built Environment for People With Autism Spectrum Disorder
This course covers how autistic people experience urban and natural environments and the design techniques used to improve their experience.
Green Infrastructure
This course defines green infrastructure, highlights its types and benefits, discusses monetary valuation and financing, and explores its role in addressing climate change, equity, and technological change.
Landscape Design for Social Sustainability, Part 1
Discover how and why the built environment succeeds or fails at supporting thriving, diverse communities, and how designers can create mechanisms that allow communities to enjoy and improve their environments to suit their needs and desires.
History of U.S. Landscape Architecture, Part 1
Kristin Faurest explores the history of the profession of landscape architecture from its origins through the 1960s, providing a vibrant global context of how humankind has shaped its landscape over the ages.
Building Bad, Part 2: How Architectural Utility is Damaged by Expression
Join Jonathan Ochshorn on a captivating exploration of his theory "Building Bad" in Part Two of this course. Discover the fascinating interplay between artistic expression and the functionality of buildings, and how they can sometimes clash.
Building Bad, Part 1: How Architectural Utility is Constrained by Politics
Discover the theory of “Building Bad”: an examination of the costs and benefits that can limit the functionality of buildings in exchange for profits.
Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design
This course discusses crime as an environmental justice issue and reviews techniques that successfully reduce crime and make communities safer and healthier through Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) theory.
Lighting Regulations and Dark Sky Places
Learn best practices for crafting lighting regulations and dark sky designations that protect night skies and improve environmental and public health.
Introduction to Lighting and Light Pollution
Discover the history and impact of light pollution on human health, the environment, wildlife, ecosystems, and the night sky.
Public Transit During Covid-19: Challenges and Lessons
The Covid-19 pandemic decimated public transit service across the United States, causing significant decreases in ridership. Social equity subsequently suffered, with the riders who depend most on public transit feeling the most tangible impacts.
Crime and Urban Planning in the United States
The spatial patterns and environmental characteristics of urban crime offer planners an opportunity to contribute to building crime-resilient communities.
A New Era of Downtown Opportunity: The Intersection of Housing and Innovation
Learn specific policy and urban design strategies for adapting downtowns to a new role: innovation communities.
Prospects for Zoning Reform
Catch up on the contemporary policy debates about zoning reform in the United States by learning from one of the nation’s leading voices on the subject, Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Jenny Schuetz.
Zoning for Incremental Development
Zoning codes can be crafted to lower the barriers to neighborhood-scale development and infill housing by providing specific tools for more equitable and affordable development.
Right-Sizing Zoning for Better Outcomes
Using elements of the built environment that contribute to a community’s unique sense of place and examples from across the United States, this course explores how to realign zoning with the goals and policies adopted in community plans.
Controlling Rents
This course introduces planners to the debate surrounding rent control, discussing both what rent control is able to accomplish, and where it often has unintended consequences.
Traffic Congestion, Part One: Sources and Responses
Explore the sources of traffic congestion while also examining common preconceptions that inform how planners and policymakers respond to the challenge of reducing congestion, for better or worse.